


this is the dead land

by musical_emjay



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, M/M, Power Swap
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-30
Updated: 2011-07-30
Packaged: 2017-10-22 00:08:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,529
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/231437
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/musical_emjay/pseuds/musical_emjay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There was never a time Sam can think of when he couldn’t feel Dean <i>right there</i>, inside his chest, in his head, lingering like cigarette smoke. Even when he was half way across town, in the bathroom before going to bed, he still seemed to take up every available space in Sam and just <i>permeate</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	this is the dead land

**Author's Note:**

> Written for estrella30's _All CW All the Time: Kink/Cliche Challenge!_ , way the hell back in the day, set vaguely somewhere in Season 1. My cliche prompt was "power swap". This was my first SPN fic ever, and I'm still weirdly fond of it. Slightly AU, in the sense that Sam has been aware of his powers for much longer than in canon.
> 
> Also, holy shit, how has it been FIVE YEARS since I wrote this?

There was never a time Sam can think of when he couldn’t feel Dean _right there_ , inside his chest, in his head, lingering like cigarette smoke. Even when he was half way across town, in the bathroom before going to bed, he still seemed to take up every available space in Sam and just _permeate_.

He remembers hating it, that one hellfire-hot summer when he was fifteen between water demons in Seattle and werewolves in Oregon, lying face down on the scratchy motel bed sheets and trying to ignore the sensations bumping against him, like a hand placed on the curve of his back, like Dean’s warm breath on his neck. He couldn’t think straight, dizzy and choking with the added pressure of _Dean_ , just another layer over the already stifling heat.

When Janine from up the street followed him home-- _just another home, temporary, forgettable, easily left behind_ \--and they fumbled together in the back of Dean’s car, it was even worse. He didn’t know what the hell he was expecting, choosing the Impala of all places, but it made his skin just itch, every sweep of his palms over her sweet skin like an echo. Nothing he was doing felt right, as if Dean was right there, watching with a disdainful eye, moving with him, shifting his fingers like so, _No Sammy, like this. Do it like this._

It became so much he almost kicked out the door in his haste to get away afterward, shivering and ignoring Janine’s cold look and the wetness on his thighs.

“M’sorry,” he mumbled, pulling on his shirt and jerking his fly. Her eyes swept over him and she tugged at her skinny jeans, smoothing out an invisible wrinkle. Sam watched her walk away, still shivering, then went inside.

He couldn’t face his brother that night when Dean stumbled through the door, a petite blonde hanging off his arm, mouth stretched wide and swollen as he kissed her. Dean would never have dared to bring a girl home when John was around, but...he wasn’t. Sam watched them from the living room, unnoticed, face red as Dean backed her down the hall to _their_ room.

He slept on the couch that night, uncomfortable and sweating, his dreams a humid, muggy haze of half-formed images that were both familiar and foreign. Wide, almond shaped eyes like dark chocolate; a delicate neck thrown back in ecstasy; broad hands curved around the sweet jut of feminine hips; the teasing coil of tattooed vines on ivory skin.

It was strange, it always was, and the next morning Sam noted with not a great deal of surprise the vibrant green twist of vines on the blonde’s ankle as she wandered around the kitchen in nothing but one of Dean’s old shirts. She watched him over the rim of her coffee mug, deep brown eyes laughing.

“You’re cute,” she murmured, and Sam had to fight back the urge to say, _You shake when you come_ , because he knew, and he wished he didn’t. He wished the girls wouldn’t stick around, so he wouldn’t have to see them and remember how they moaned when Dean touched them, how his hands looked on their skin.

Later, when the visions started, Sam decided he wasn’t going to wish for anything ever again. Things just always seemed to get worse.

 

***

 

Dad’s trail dries up again, and they roll into the next small town tired and irritable, dirt under their nails and hair sticking to their foreheads in greasy tendrils. Sam feels about ready to throw things, curled in on himself in the passenger seat, jittery with leashed anger. It’s been a hundred miles since they said a word to each other, and Sam’s itching for a fight, knows by the clench of Dean’s jaw that he is too.

They’re barely in the door of the motel room, however, before Dean is grabbing his keys and going right back out again, shrugging into his jacket.

“Where are you _going_?” Sam asks incredulously, moving to block his path.

Dean shoots him a heated look, lips thinning. “Out.”

Sam almost lets him go, thinks perhaps this is better than them trading blows, but in the end realizes he’ll have to spend another night listening to Dean fuck some random girl, choking on the ghostly sensation of Dean’s arousal, the slick feel of the woman under his hands, and decides that, no, he is _not_ in the mood.

“Fuck that,” he snarls. “Stop fucking avoiding me.”

“What the hell, Sam?” Dean shouts back, eyes sparking. “I’m just trying to get out of your way! Thought you might _appreciate_ it.”

“That won’t make a fucking bit of difference!”

“And what the hell does that mean?”

Sam grits his teeth and looks away, his anger dimming. “Nothing.” He can feel Dean’s heavy gaze on him, and shifts, regretting his words. “Nothing, Dean. Just---whatever. Go.”

There’s a moment of tense silence, and then Dean palms his keys and stalks out the door, slamming it behind him. Sam can’t seem to stop shaking. He sits abruptly on the bed, scrubbing at his face with dirty hands, then crawls under the covers, falling asleep still in his clothes. Sometime in the night he feels the painful scrape of brick wall against his back, the heady tightness of desire; slick, tight heat and yielding flesh.

He sighs, and descends into the black.

 

***

 

There’s a kind of emptiness in his mind when he wakes up, like he’s been scored clean and cut free, a wasteland of utter, utter silence. It’s... _wrong_ in so many ways he can’t quite comprehend it. He’s awake, conscious and alive and Dean...he can’t feel him, he isn’t _there_. He can feel the scratchy motel sheets, can see the brown water stains on the ceiling above him, can hear the gentle roar of highway traffic outside, but there’s nothing else.

It’s all just...gone.

 

***

 

He finds Dean in the bathroom staring into the mirror, arms braced around the sink, his face a pallid gray. When Sam opens the door he grunts like he’s just been punched in the stomach and flinches away from his approach.

“Dean?”

He can’t seem to keep the tremble out of his own voice, a cold sweat running down his back, and Dean lets out a low, confused noise.

“Sam,” he grits out, eyes narrowed and a little wild. “Sam, could you...please go away.”

“Dean, I--”

“Go away, Sam. Unless you’re gonna explain to me just what the hell is going on, tell me why _I’m_ suddenly the one dreaming about dead people, then _get out_.”

Sam feels his blood run cold. “ _What_?”

“I said _get out, Sam_.”

“No--no, that’s not what you---”

“ _Get. Out._ ”

Sam backs out slowly, pulling the door behind him, and feels his chest clench when Dean visibly relaxes, the stiff line of his back going soft, shaking ever so slightly.

He has to get away suddenly, feels the terror and panic bubbling up his throat. The room spins around him and he stumbles toward the door, yanking it open just so he can hear something other than the awful, heavy silence in his head. His legs fail him once he crosses the threshold and he falls heavily to the pavement, hands thrown out to stop himself but failing. Nothing makes sense, not the strange, bent line of his brother’s strong back, not the silence, not the feeling of complete and utter _absence_.

The sound of the bathroom door opening brings him abruptly back, and he somehow finds his feet and makes his way inside again. Dean is on his bed, shirt discarded, hands between his knees. The room smells like piss and stale sweat, and Sam hovers by his own bed, watching the careful rise and fall of Dean’s back, the knobs of his spine standing out in sharp relief.

“I can--I can feel you,” Dean murmurs low, deep and rough like gravel. “In my head.” He sweeps over his temple, slowly. Sam feels a cold pit open up in his stomach, can’t seem to get enough air.

“And there’s this girl, she’s screaming. I can’t see her face, and I know I can’t save her, but she won’t stop.”

Sam steps forward, grasping at Dean’s arms. “Dean---I--”

Dean pushes him away, moving further back on the bed. Their eyes meet, and it’s suddenly like every time he looked in the mirror, the dark weight in his eyes, the gleam of _knowing_. It shakes him to the core, his own eyes turned back on him.

Dean’s face is like thunder, all sharp lines and black, anguished shadows.

“Is it always like this? The...feeling? The visions?”

Sam doesn’t know what to tell him. _Yes, like you’re lying down beside me, like I can’t get enough air. Yes, like there’s nothing but endless faces and endless lives too far away for me to save. Yes, like every move you make is echoed inside me, like every emotion is just too much and I’m suffocating in you. Yes, yes, yes._

“No,” he lies. “Not always.”

Dean looks away, and Sam has never felt so lost.

 

***

 

Before they leave town Dean corners Sam in the bathroom where he’s packing up his things, crowding into his space, backing him against the towel rack.

“You know we aren't leaving until we find the thing that did...this,” he says, low and rough, gesturing at his head. Sam stares back at him.

“And how are we gonna do that, Dean? What are we gonna look for?” He pushes Dean back, wondering if they were really going to fight this time around. Some perverse part of him wanted it, needed to feel Dean warm and alive in a way he couldn’t anymore. It was fucking tearing him apart. “If you’ve got any good ideas then why don’t you share?”

Dean’s eyes flare and he seems to coil in on himself, every muscle going tense and strained. “I don’t know, Sam! I just need some _answers_! Is that too much to ask? Is it too much to want to know why _I’m_ suddenly the one seeing dead people? Why I can’t close my eyes without seeing you and Dad dead? Why I can’t take a fucking piss without feeling every move you make?”

He grabs Sam’s arms and pushes him back against the door, looking him square in the eye. Sam shakes under his hands, wholly unfamiliar with the strange edge of pleading in Dean’s voice.

“God, just--help me out here, Sam, ‘cause I don’t get it.”

Sam has too look away, stares down at his feet. “Fine,” he whispers. “Fine, let’s go.”

He moves away, dropping his bag, and Dean follows.

 

***

 

They look, but there’s nothing to find.

The people they question just narrow their eyes and shut their doors, suspicion in every subtle twitch of their mouths when they say, “No, son, I don’t know what you’re talking about. This is a good town. Nothing strange happens here.”

There’s fear in their eyes, but not the kind you see in people who’ve got something to hide. It just the fear of what’s not familiar, the kind that makes women pull their children inside, and makes welcoming smiles go cold. The town is so small it only takes a day to talk to everyone who will listen, which isn’t many, and before long Sam is itching to leave, to get away from the stares that linger on their backs and the whispers that follow them from house to house.

Dean doesn’t want to leave. He paces around the motel room like a caged lion, picking up things and throwing them down again, the crackling tension surrounding him rocketing up a notch every time. Sam watches him until he falls asleep, and wakes up around one in the morning to the sound of Dean savagely zipping his duffel.

“We’re leaving,” Dean says when Sam sits up and blinks blearily at him. Sam watches for a moment longer, then throws on some clothes and packs up his things, following Dean out into the cool dark of the parking lot. Dean throws him the keys and his mouth twists into a frightening half-grin that isn’t funny at all when Sam fails to catch them and then stares at them stupidly on the ground.

“Visions, remember?” Dean quips, tapping at his head, and Sam’s stomach twists sickeningly.

“Right,” he mumbles, and picks up the keys, opening the driver side door.

Once the engine roars to life, Dean pulls out his cellphone, face illuminated an eerie green by the display. “We’ve got coordinates,” he says, as if this were just another job, another road to drive and demon to fight. As if nothing had happened. Sam feels something brittle snap inside him and shuts off the car.

“Sam, what the he--”

“Dean.”

Dean turns in his seat, his face shadowed and unfamiliar again, every part of him buzzing like something was lying just under his skin.

“Are you OK?” Sam asks, feeling inane and useless. He’s never learned how to comfort Dean, what words are the right ones to make him understand just how much Sam is scared. “I mean, are we just gonna go, like that? Don’t you want to--”

“I don’t want anything right now, Sam.” The cold conviction in his voice makes Sam flinch, the utter quiet and stillness. “We’ve got a job to do, and in case you haven’t noticed, Dad is still missing. This isn’t about me.” He pauses, seems to gather himself, then turns away. “Just drive, Sam.”

So he does, because he doesn’t know what to say.

 

***

 

It’s another hundred miles before Dean wakes from his fitful sleep in the passenger seat, mouth open wide and teeth bared in a silent scream. Sam has to pull over so he won’t crash the car, knuckles going white around the wheel, and even after coming out of a fucking _psychic vision_ Dean somehow manages to look at him like _Sam’s_ the one with problems.

Sam doesn’t ask until they’re back on the road again. Dean answers after a moment, sounding dazed.

“A man. There’s something after him, but I couldn’t see. He was in the woods.”

Sam stares through the windshield, nothing but rows of wheat and a straight road ahead of them for miles. Dean follows his look, mouth pinching.

“I’m sorry,” Sam says. Dean shrugs stiffly, jaw clenched, and that’s that.

Sometime later, Dean abruptly reaches forward and shuts off the music. The sudden silence is so absolute Sam wonders for a moment if he’s dreaming again, back in that soundless wasteland that he just can’t escape. The familiar hysteria bubbles up, but then he realizes that Dean is here. He doesn’t dream of Dean anymore.

Dean places his shaking hands flat on his thighs and turns to face him. “You lied to me,” he says softly. “It’s never going to be any different, is it?”

Sam figures there’s no point in lying any longer. Dean could probably tell, anyway. He wishes....he wishes things weren’t like this.

“No.” he chokes out, laughing brokenly.

And that’s that.


End file.
